ASH: Shadow Girls #4 - Into The Underworld

[Drew Nilium]

On 1/2/22 10:35 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>       [The cover shows the four magical girls walking down a dimly lit
>        tunnel with harsh shadows tinged with their colors.]

ooooooh I love it

>       Maddie started to take it, then paused.  "You do realize that I won't
> just unlock the new information, I'll have access to everything Professor
> Shade gave to each of you?  If I don't already have enough to figure out all
> of your secret identities...other than Julie, who I already know...this will
> clinch it.  Do you trust me enough?"
>       "I am SO bad at secret identities," Tetra Red, aka Julie Li sighed,
> resting her face in her hands.

heeheehee

>       "As you say, you likely already could figure it out if you wanted to,"
> Tammy shrugged.  "There are not that many high school students in Manhattan,
> and since ONE of us started dyeing her hair pink when out of costume it
> wouldn't even take that long," she gave Icosa-Pink the side-eye.

XD <3

>       "But when the shadows cover my hair it's a darker pink," she rebutted.

X3

>       "Hey, I don't remember any Greek gods named Inanna.  At least, none in
> my TwenCen history class," Julie noted, thinking back on what Maddie had told
> them was on the hardcopy letter she got earlier that night.
>       "She's not Greek," Tammy replied as the laptop slooooowly booted up.
> "Mesopotamian.  Syncretic with Ishtar, although it is unknown if she was a
> separate entity or not...even when the gods were on television in the 90s,
> they generally declined to clarify such matters. 

Hmmmmm. *nodnods*

> That does raise the
> question of why she'd use Platonic solids, although I suppose if the concept
> of Forms that Plato espoused is true, the gods would be aware of it as well.
> And that's also assuming Plato himself didn't appropriate the idea from a
> still older and uncredited Babylonian philosopher whose name has been lost to
> posterity."

Hmmmmmm! *nodnodnods*

>       "Well, it looks like I'm going to be helping you four out, even if I'm
> not willing to be the mentor Professor Shade wants...that depends on what he
> has to say in these files," she inserted the dongle and dragged the folders
> onto its icon.  "And I think I'm ready to trust you four with some of my
> secrets, but I need some time to clean up...there's secrets that aren't mine
> alone to give up, and I need to sanitize some data and do a little light
> housecleaning before I let you see it.

You know, reasonable.

>       The World Trade Center "Twin Towers" rose like ghosts above Manhattan,
> even after many of the older skyscrapers had been deliberately deconstructed
> to keep them from collapsing from neglect.  There simply wasn't the need for
> hundred story towers in modern New York City, and the Twin Towers were an
> echo of the dead past.

yesssssss nice. Powerful resonance.

> Even now, they were mostly empty, despite being a
> major MetaPsych research center...their dark and bloody history meant no one
> else even wanted them, but no one dared let them collapse either.  So they
> got regular maintenance, even the parts no one used.  No one *wanted* to use
> them, rightly considering the buildings haunted after Odin packed them with
> the corpses of his believers in 1998.

Daaaaaaaamn. :o That's a hell of a thing! I love/hate it!

> The fact that many MetaPsych employees
> did live there just confirmed the popular opinion that MetaPsych was a bunch
> of weirdos.

heeheehee
>       The former Hellhound collaborator shook her head.  "Whatever the Santari
> did to force-grow that Anchor clone that Marx bought gave it the poor neural
> plasticity of an adult as well.  The data I transferred is still in there,
> but it's not really making any connections.  I suspect that Santari don't
> even bother trying to make thinking clones this way, they just slap in
> computer brains to run the higher processes.

Ewgh. Cyberpunk bullshit.

> Jessa had attracted way more official attention
> than anyone in the Hellhound troika was comfortable with.  On the plus side,
> the former manager of a free clinic was now highly placed in MetaPsych, the
> premiere telepathic research and training organization, so she had access to
> a great many more resources.  On the minus side, that came with
> accountability and an inability to just vanish every so often to beat up
> paragangers.  Combined with Beth Willot getting more duties as a NAC
> Marshall, only Maddie had been available to run the Hellhound identity, and
> she had never really been the main person in the suit.

Well, entirely reasonable. X>

>       Well, *a* suit.  The three women were similar in build, but there were
> three suits, each padded and armored to bring them closer to each other in
> appearance.  Three suit designs, that is, and lots of backups and spare
> parts.

Also very intelligent!

> I don't suppose you've
> noticed that Manhattan has developed a case of Magical Girls?"

"A Case of Magical Girls" would make a good title.

>       "Someone claiming to be the Third Age hero Professor Shade has been
> setting up high school girls with magical gems and pointing them at Bathory."
>       "How many dead so far?" Jessa looked vaguely horrified.

X3; A useful reaction

>  I'm mostly curious if there seem to be any potentially
> malicious omissions or false data.  Like I said, I think Shade wants them
> going after Bathory, and even if he's who he says he is I don't entirely
> trust his motives.  He might have left out something important."

Mmmmmm, indeed. >:/

> Could you run this past your experts and see if
> it pings on whatever standards you have for deific power?"
>       "Luckily for you, our sensitives live in the towers, I'm sure I can find
> one willing to take a read on this while I check the data out.  If you want
> to hang out in the lobby or even the memorial park for an hour or so, I can
> get you at least a preliminary take on this all."

Finally, a lucky break~

>       "Thanks.  One more thing, in case you weren't already planning on it...
> see if you can find out if anyone reported Professor Shade dead?

Ohohoho.

> Where
> Seven World Trade Center had once stood was now a memorial park dedicated to
> the victims of the Ride of the Valkyries.  Many names were engraved in a wall
> similar to that of the Vietnam War Memorial, but too many of the dead were
> unknown and unclaimed, and for all their horrific numbers they were merely a
> tiny fraction of all those the gods took on July 6, 1998.  The world had
> barely had time to realize what had happened in New York when that news was
> overtaken by the vanishing of two thirds of the human race, including
> everyone with paranormal powers.

Holy crap that's intense. Not something I remembered :o

>       Still, it was a peaceful place, and had never been touched by paragang
> violence even at the worst of the early 20s.

#mood

> It wasn't unusual for someone
> to spend part of a Sunday afternoon contemplating the dead, so Maddie didn't
> stand out as she waited.

What a world to live in, huh.

> On a purely mundane
> archaeological level, it doesn't seem to be Mesopotamian, but a lot of divine
> artifacts don't resemble anything historical in particular.  Godly art wasn't
> always tied to the art of their mortal worshippers.--

Fancy-asses

>       --Right.  So whatever it is, it's not strongly linked to any god or
> goddess right now.  Residual power, but you're not going to call down Berlin
> part two by using this or the gems that were pried out of it.  Probably.

Good o3o;v

> If he had powers, he obviously wouldn't still be around,
> but we don't have enough data to tell if his claims of being artifact
> empowered would actually protect someone from being swept up in the great
> vanishing.--

Hmmmmm. You'd think, considering how it actually happened, but of course they 
don't know that.

>       Maddie got the impression of a shaking head.  --I'll have a courier drop
> it at dead drop fifteen, so you don't have to risk suspicion coming inside
> again.  Once is touristy, twice is weird.--

Heeheehee

>       ++Yeah, I think I might be reactivating the network in general, so might
> as well start making use of it again.++

:D

> We decided all coming in would draw
> too much attention, but I'm enough of a regular."
>       "Good, that's one less lesson you need," Maddie smiled,

Awwwww. <3

>       Julie did so.  "Now wha...is that my voice?  This is a voice changer?"
>       Maddie nodded.  "Might need some tweaking, the original goal was to
> sound scary and inhuman, but I figured you wouldn't want that.

Ohhhhh, nice.

>       "What the heck do you have these things for?  And is this ballistic
> cloth or something?"  During that, Julie had taken off the choker and her
> voice returned to normal.
>       "I'll answer that tonight, someplace a little more secure.

Heck yeah. :D

>       Tammy cast a skeptical eye around the alley from where the four girls
> hid in the shadows.  "I think you're right.  It looks a little too staged to
> really be abandoned.  It looks like someone wants it to appear abandoned, and
> also unwelcoming so that it stays abandoned."
>       "Good eye," came a voice from behind the door the four were watching.

GASP. :D

> I don't like
> to keep the city cameras spoofed for too long, someone's bound to notice even
> in an artfully neglected part of town like this."

That's a good phrase.

> "Through there," Maddie pointed at a dimly lit
> curtain, then tossed a handful of dust and grit in the air behind her as she
> followed, obscuring the footprints that had just been made.

Noice.

>       "A secret base in the sewers?" Octa-Green wrinkled her nose.

C'mon, girl, know your history~ n.n

>       "How low does this all go?"
>       "Honestly?  I'm not entirely sure.  My 'secret base' is about three
> hundred meters below ground level, though.

Dang, that's a lot of sub-basements.

>       "Okay, how the hell does a twenty-something store owner have her own
> underground complex?" Octa-Green asked.
>       "This is America!  Or was," Maddie shrugged.  "How does anyone get rich
> anymore?  I inherited it.

X3 <3 <3 <3 Good shit.

> "Don't put your hands outside the cage,
> good way to lose a finger.  OSHA will never know about this place."

XD <3

>       Maddie interrupted her, picking up a demon-headed motorcycle helmet.
> "Xueli Li, Tamica Sullivan, Dhriti Singh, and Olivia Stuart, allow me to
> introduce the reason why Professor Shade thought I'd make a good mentor to
> you."  She put on the helmet, and her voice became a demonic growl.
> "HELLHOUND."

:D :D :D

>       Side note in a worldbuilding sense, the "dark backlash" magical girl
> stuff like Madoka Magica or Magical Girl Raising Project likely never
> happened in the ASH setting, since it's largely a 21st Century thing in real
> life.  Heck, Sailor Moon was just barely getting traction when the Godmarket
> hit.

It's true. X>

>  As a result, the in-universe magical girl tropes are probably rather
> different from those in real life.  And, as implied by Jessa's "old cartoons"
> statement, any later mahou shoujo stuff in Japan didn't make a large impact
> in the Combine (although one might argue that it hasn't made a huge impact in
> real life America either, outside of geek circles).

I would definitely argue that there's some influence that's snuck into the 
post-Adventure Time/Steven Universe wave of emotionally complex kids' cartoons.

>       There's a lot of backstory brought up and elaborated on in the May 2
> scene.  The Ride of the Valkyries was something Matt Rossi III and Tony Pi
> brought into the world as part of Warden,

That makes sense, that seems very them.

> and the Devlin Marx incident has
> been referred to briefly before in this series, as happening in the Kheper's
> Path arc of ASH #89-92.

That I do remember. n.n

>       Yes, the last line of this issue is hardly a shocker to the reader, but
> sometimes a cliffhanger is for the benefit of the characters, yah?

YES. :D

>       While there's enough clues in the past two issues to puzzle out which
> real name goes with which codename, here's a key.
> 
>       Tetra-Red: Xueli "Julie" Li
>       Hexa-Blue: Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan
>       Octa-Green: Dhriti Singh
>       Icosa-Pink: Olivia Stuart

:D

Drew "nice to met you" Nilium